Category: Halloween

Come October, the general focus seems to sway toward all things spooky! Halloween is the last day of the month, yet it’s advertised from day one and sometimes before October even arrives! Although this is most often a time for terrifying movies, television shows and horror books, it doesn’t have to be all “horror, terror and gore, oh my!”

The fact is, Halloween evolved from ancient traditions concerning the after life! It’s supposed to be the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Fortune Telling, Divination and Spirit Contact are all more easily done during this very interesting time of year. So, it’s understandable, given that, how the focus has evolved over time to what it is today.

Honestly, I am no different. I worked like crazy to get Rosemary’s Ghosts ready for release this month! But truly, it’s the perfect book for Halloween. Even if I have to say so myself. The thing is…my character Tess Schafer, a very gifted medium, understands the relevance of Halloween and that comes through in the story. Besides that, I love sharing what I’ve learned about the paranormal through story-telling. For instance…Tess and Rosemary (a poor, sweet lady being terrorized by ghosts!) have a session of table tipping!

Have you ever done any table tipping? Do you know what it is? It isn’t anything like “cow tipping” (which I’ve never done by the way!), if that’s what came to mind! Most people have heard of the Ouija board I’m sure. The thing about the Ouija is that is acts as a portal to the spirit world. Which is great for those wanting to communicate with spirit, BUT it can bring through all manner of entities. You have to operate it with responsibility and most people who “play” with this so-called “game” don’t understand that! Whenever you seek to interact with “spirit” (the other side), you should know what you are doing and maintain control of the situation. Otherwise, well…who knows what you’ll inadvertently bring through! There are bad, evil entities lurking “over there” just looking for an opportunity to lurk around HERE! But I digress…I want to talk about table tipping.

Unlike the Ouija board, tables do not act as portals to spirit. They are simply a “tool” if you will, for talking to spirit. So, table tipping is much safer. One word of caution though…you can still bring through negative entities if you open it up to “whoever wants to come through and talk…please do!” Always make it clear that you want to talk to GOOD, LOVING, POSITIVE spirits. If you get a bad vibe, bad messages and bad behavior…END the session. I’ve had strong “spirited” folks come through but nothing bad.

Table tipping is one of those activities perfect for Halloween time! Just get yourself a small table…round is best but a square one will do (I’ve used a card table with no problem). The legs should not be flush with the edges of the table. They CAN be flush, it will still work, but it’s EASIER for spirit energy to tip a table when the legs are not flush with the edges of the table. For people who haven’t done this before, are a little nervous about it and have skeptics in their midst, the legs NOT being flush will be much easier for the spirits to operate. Make it clear to everyone who is participating in the table-tipping session that you will only welcome good, loving, honest and positive spirits! It’s even best if you request certain ones…departed family members, friends or the like. I like to say a prayer at the beginning of each session…prayer promotes positive energy and keeps the negative vibes away. Once you are ready, gather around the table and lightly rest your hands flat upon it. Don’t push down and don’t hover your hands above it. I see some people in table-tipping sessions whose hands slide across the table as it moves…if the hands are sliding across the table then you are not resting your hands upon it! (to the left are some examples of tables…I’ve used both of these. The one on the right works great…my mother made it for me!! Cool huh?)

I’m no expert about spirit stuff, but I have my own thoughts about how I think things work and it’s my belief that those in spirit use our personal energy field to make the table move. Since we are here operating within a physical world, our energy is strong (it has to be in order for us to exist here!) and interacts with things of this world quite easily. Spirit, on the other hand, operates within the spirit world and so their energy is different. All energy has movement (vibration) and spirit energy is moving (vibrating) at an incredible rate…much, much faster than the energy that makes up our physical world. That’s why it’s hard to see them (they are moving too fast…think of a fan blade on high speed…can you see it? No!) But it’s not impossible. And that’s a different story.

So anyway, by placing your hands flat on the table, resting them there gently, your personal energy becomes connected to the table’s energy and the spirit coming through can easily manipulate it through you. When the table starts moving, you’ll “feel” a different sort of energy and know something is going on! The table will move in such a way that you’ll think someone else at the table is doing it. The good thing about this is that you’ll KNOW for sure it wasn’t you doing it! If everyone at the table is being honest, then rest assured, they aren’t causing the table to move…spirit is doing the work! For some reason, whenever I’m involved in a table-tipping session, I laugh a lot. It’s all good energy and good, positive energy is uplifting, so laughter is fine. In fact, laughter raises your personal energy to a higher degree (increases your vibrational speed) and table-tipping becomes even easier! Singing helps to get the energy going strong as well.

Once the table starts moving…it will shake, shimmy and tip…then take charge of it. State your intentions…whether you want someone specific or not…and make it clear, again, that you will allow only positive spirit energy to come through. Then you set the “rules” for engagement. I do it this way: “We will ask you questions and we want you to tip the table once for yes responses and tip the table twice for no responses.” Now, you can change that around if you want but that’s how I do it. If you want to receive messages then you instruct the spirit to tip the table for each letter of the alphabet, stopping on the letter they want. It’s time consuming to get messages because you have to tip the table for each letter of every word in the message. Sometimes the spirits get so active and impatient that the table tips so fast it becomes confusing what letter they are trying to give!

Another thing the table will often do is tip toward someone operating it and rest against them. Gentle efforts to push the table’s legs back down to the floor will meet resistance. I call these moments “hugs”. It’s quite common for a loved one who has come through to give “hugs” and it’s really quite an emotional moment. Honestly, you can “feel” their energy. Sometimes the table will even “walk” across the floor … often heading towards someone not operating the table (they are either trying to let that person know they want to talk to them…or they might be wanting to give a hug!). The thing to remember is to not resist the table’s movements and not to help it either!

Most often the case will be that while a table is tipping out a message, the operators will get a strong feel for what the word is…even if only one letter has been completed. This is because the spirit is actually mingling with our energy and their messages will filter right into our thoughts. This is basically how a medium works…they allow spirits to come right on into their thoughts. The thing about those in spirit is they don’t really use WORDS once they cross over. Words are too limiting (and this eliminates all language barriers as well!). They communicate through feelings and so that’s why it’s hard sometimes to understand a message coming through. They are trying to convey a feeling to you and you are trying to put it into specific words. This is also why symbols are often used (for medium or psychic work, and especially in dreams!). But you don’t have to worry about trying to interpret symbols or anything when you are table-tipping.

It’s all good fun, really! There SHOULD be lots of laughter and enjoyment. Interaction with spirit should be a POSITIVE experience.

I wrote this post in celebration of the release of my book “Rosemary’s Ghosts” and focused it on table-tipping because my characters have a pretty cool table-tipping session in the story!

October is the month for scary movies, haunted houses and spooky stories. Since we are nearing the end of the Halloween Season, I am in full-out Halloween mode! This post was initially published last year and at that time, I only named eleven picks. I’ve since added a few more.

Now, for me, when I say “scary”, I mean the spine tingling, hair raising, goosebump rising, OMG kind of scary. Not blood and gore and hatchet scary. I sat through the Friday the 13th and Halloween movies with my hands over my eyes. How are we supposed to enjoy a movie we can’t even bring ourselves to watch? I KNOW, some of you love that stuff. But not me.

Since the movies with a scare factor I enjoy most aren’t due to hacked up body counts and blood, you won’t see much in the way of gore while watching any of the following. In my opinion, the movies that make you cringe without the use of machetes and chainsaws are the best. Since stories that include ghostly elements happens to be the kind of stories I like to watch as well as write (my most recent paranormal thriller being NO MATTER WHAT!), I thought I’d share my top twenty list of spooky movies. Now, there’s been a LOT of movies made over the years, and I’m sure I’ll not list one or two that you think should be included. If so, please feel free to leave a comment and share your picks!

So without further ado, here is my list.

1. The Entity. This movie is supposed to be a true story about a woman who was repeatedly attacked by a supernatural entity. You can only take Hollywood depictions of true stories with a grain of salt, but it still made for a pretty intense movie!

2. The Changeling. This is a great spooky tale of a ghost wanting justice for his untimely death.

3. The Sixth Sense. I loved this movie. It was scary, spooky and had a great ending!

4. Poltergeist. Although this got pretty crazy towards the end, I thought this movie gave a great portrayal of supernatural occurrences.

5. Ghost. Okay, this one isn’t really scary, but it was a good ghost movie anyway!

6. Gothika. This movie had a nice spooky atmosphere and a few jumpy spots. And it was a good story.

7. Paranormal Activity & 2 & 3 & 4 These movies definitely have the creep factor. Okay, they are about demons not ghosts, but still, they are pretty scary and so I included them on my list.

9. The Shining. Okay, this movie turned into a story of an ax-wielding maniac, but up until it became all about that, the movie was spooky scary. (The book is MUCH better!)

10. What Lies Beneath. This movie was pretty good at portraying scary ghost activity … at first. Then it became a raving-lunatic-out-to-kill movie and that sort of ruined it for me. But because the first half or so was pretty spooky, I put it on my list.

11. Stir of Echoes. Although this film didn’t get a lot of attention, I thought it was pretty good and so it, too, made my list.

12. Insidious. I had to add this one because my daughter loves it and because it IS spooky!

14. Dragonfly. This one definitely had a paranormal influence and so I decided to include it.

15. White Noise. This one had a lot of potential and there were some bit parts I thought was pretty good but it is sort of laughable in places. Still, I thought I’d include it because sometimes a light-scare is good to enjoy!

16. Lake Mungo. Another recent discovery. Done as a documentary but interesting even so.

17. The Orphanage. This one was recommended to me when I posted last year’s picks. It definitely needs to be on the list!

18. The Amityville Horror. This was supposed to be based on a true story and though I think Hollywood did a lot of embellishment, I figure maybe SOME of it was true and if so, THAT is pretty scary! This is the updated version but the old Amityville might be a good alternative. Watch them both and compare! By the way…the book was much better! Also, there are a whole slew of movies that came out with the Amityville name attached to them. Most of them are rather silly and some are gory but you might like them. I didn’t.

19. Elvira Mistress of the Dark. Yeah, I know, this one isn’t spooky, scary but it sure is FUN! I laughed through this one and it’s such a great HALLOWEEN kind of movie!

20. The Fourth Kind. This is a bizarre movie. It’s one of those that after you are done watching it, you are tempted to watch it again just to see if you can figure out what the heck you just watched! It might be about aliens (or not…do we ever really know?) but I thought it was spooky enough to include on the list.

So what say you? Have you seen any of these? As I said, if you want to add more, please leave a comment and tell us about it!

Hope you all have a Spooktacular Halloween!! And if you don’t celebrate that holiday, have a great October 31st!!

Halloween is an interesting time of year. It’s bright with Fall colors, fun with pumpkin art and dressed up scarecrows. It’s scary creepy with ghost tours and haunted houses. I think the huge attraction of Halloween is the carefree scare factor. The SAFE tricks of terror. We love to be scared so long as we’re safe. I’ve attended and worked at many Halloween tours of fake haunted houses, haunted campgrounds, haunted woods and the like. The people who come out for these attractions do so with the hopes of getting the living daylights scared out of them. But they are willing to risk such fear so long as they know they are safe. I get this a lot, “Will anyone touch me?”, “They won’t really hurt us or anything will they?” Yeah, they want total reassurance before embarking on the tour into fake hell. Despite assurances that no one will be touched, many of them go through the experience screaming in terror and maneuvering desperately to escape possible contact. Children cry because it’s all so very real to them and big people scream because they suspend belief for just a few minutes and accept that the horror before them could be as real as the children think it is.

I like going through these concocted attractions for the “jump” factor. If someone manages to startle me suddenly, my heart skips and whether I want to or not, a scream often follows. Fun stuff. That little burst of adrenalin that accompanies such moments is quite a rush. Maybe that’s what this is all about…getting a rush without the use of harmful drugs! The gory scenes and small “plays” enacted in some of these scary Halloween attractions don’t scare me but I do enjoy watching people make fools of themselves pretending to eat fake body parts and mess around with fake blood. I’ll take fun however I can get it!

We experience many moments in our lives, the ones we remember best are the ones that elicit terror, sadness and extreme joy. Halloween isn’t for sad moments or joyful ones (at least not for the most part!). As a kid, Halloween was about dressing up and getting candy. Fun stuff. As a teenager, Halloween was about haunted houses and scary movies. As an adult Halloween is about decorating, scaring others and spooky stories (the book stores are full of horror books during October).

It really is a whole different kind of scared when you think your life is really about to end, though. I should know. I had one particularly terrifying moment in which I thought exactly that. I was eighteen at the time and visiting friends in another state. One night I was sitting at a small desk in the kitchen talking on the phone to a guy I’d met while out dancing the night before. The only light was from the small desk lamp. The rest of the family (three girls about my age, their brother who was ten, and their mother) were all in the living room watching a movie. I heard the garage door open but didn’t pay it any attention. The door was to the left of the desk. I was so engrossed in my conversation that it took a moment for the heavy breathing to penetrate my consciousness. I remember turning to look for the cause of the sound and then freezing in shock. I literally could not move. I wanted to scream, but no sound would come out of my suddenly useless mouth. Bruce (the guy I was talking to) rattled on, totally unaware of the major drama unfolding on the other end of the line.

The person standing before me was wearing a black ski mask, a long black trench coat, black boots, and black gloves. In his hand was the longest, sharpest, shiniest knife I had ever seen. He held it up high in his right hand, poised to strike. My eyes focused on that shiny blade (it caught the light from the desk) which moved in unison with his breathing. My thoughts scattered in many directions all at once and yet somehow I managed to keep track of them all. My immediate concern was the rest of the family sitting unaware in the living room. I accepted that I was going to die. Truly, my top priority in that horrifying moment was to warn the others, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage it since I couldn’t make a sound. I wondered if I’d get my voice back while the knife was striking and if I could live long enough, thus keeping the killer occupied long enough, to allow the others to escape. As those rather heroic thoughts flitted through my mind, my whole life flashed before my eyes (yeah, it really happens, it’s not just a cliche) . I thought of everyone I knew and loved and all the wonderful moments I had with them. I was grateful for the good moments and filled with regret for the bad ones. I thought of all the fights and upsets and how stupid they all now seemed. In those few seconds, so many things crowded my mind. Why hadn’t I done more with my life? Why hadn’t I been a better daughter, sister, friend? If only I could do it all over again. But no, at eighteen, my life was about to end by the blade of a sharp knife. I wondered if it would hurt. I wondered if I should close my eyes. I must have been an amusing sight sitting there as still as death, my mouth opening and closing, my eyes wide, afraid to blink. Speaking of my eyes, I wondered what to do with them. Shut them so I wouldn’t SEE the knife descent or keep them open? What to do? Eyes open? Eyes shut? Strange thoughts for sure.

Suddenly the person starts laughing and the hand holding the knife drops down. The other gloved hand pulls the mask off. It’s one of the girls I was visiting. Reaction set in. I dropped the phone and began to shake all over. I wanted to cry with relief but could do nothing but hyperventilate. My heart which seemed to have stopped only moments before, was suddenly pounding furiously. I nearly sank into a boneless heap onto the floor. I wanted to tell her that the joke was not funny. But I couldn’t make anything sound coherent. That mouth of mine which could prattle on for hours was quite useless in a crisis! Ronnie (the girl) put her finger to her lips to indicate I was to say nothing and replaced the ski mask on her head. Before I could stop her, she went running down the hall to scare the rest of her family. For some reason, she didn’t use the kitchen entrance into the living room. I managed to stand up and shakily make my way to the livingroom doorway where I wordlessly watched the terror unfold. Ronnie’s mother saw her first. She was laying on a couch which had direct line of sight to the hallway. She turned her head to look and immediately screamed. She had no problems with body parts refusing to move as she jumped up onto the couch and did a wild in-place run. Waving her hands in a wide arc, she screamed in a terrified-but-determined-to-save-her-children voice that they needed to run! RUN! RUN! The two girls sitting on the floor jumped up in unison, a move that couldn’t have been more perfectly choreographed. Instead of running, they stood stock still, hands on chest, and screamed. I knew they probably couldn’t run because their legs wouldn’t budge but I thought it interesting they had no problem getting their vocal cords to work. Their young brother scrambled up onto the back of the couch where he’d been lounging and crouched there, screaming over and over and over. Were this a real intruder, we all would have died. Well, maybe not the mother. Her body was working just fine. Though why she jumped up on the couch I don’t know. Maybe it’s what people do when excited. Didn’t Tom Cruise do that once?

Thankfully, Ronnie realized that the terror she was eliciting was really not acceptable and quickly removed her mask. Soon as her mother realized it was her daughter and that they weren’t about to be slain to death, she jumped off the couch and nearly killed said daughter! She grabbed Ronnie’s shoulders and shook her hard. “You stupid girl, I could have killed you! If I had had anything to strike you with, I would have done it. Don’t you EVER do anything like this again.” We had to pull her off. I knew it was a total adrenaline charge taking over. We had all truly believed we were going to die. The horror of that doesn’t just seep away.

What that incident taught me were several things. 1) Don’t pull a supposed life-threatening prank on someone who will believe the danger is REAL, there’s no telling how they might react…they might just shoot first and ask questions later! 2) Your life really does flash before your eyes…every moment and every day of it! 3) Arguments and disagreements mean NOTHING when facing the end of your life. 4) We need to show appreciation towards our loved ones more (I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told my family that I loved them and that bothered me immensely). 5) When terrified, we cannot move and we cannot think rationally. If we could just push the panic down when facing danger and allow our brains to THINK clearly, we’d probably find a way out of the mess. 6) Don’t rant and rave at the stupid actors on TV when they stand there and allow their gruesome ends to occur. They are doing what would probably happen in truth. If your body knows it canNOT escape, it will freeze in terror. 7) You probably aren’t as selfish as you might think. I truly was concerned for the others even as I thought my own life was over. And finally, adrenalin overload makes your body as weak as a kitten once the danger has passed. Something to keep in mind if you ever go through a traumatic event.

Fear is a rush of excitement caused by a flood of adrenalin in the body. That’s all well and good. Enjoy the rush. But when inducing that fear, keep it at acceptable levels. Jump at people, scream suddenly, rev that chainless chainsaw, spurt the fake blood, chomp on plastic body parts but don’t ever make someone think they might really die.